In this help article, you will learn how to set up a custom tracking domain for Email Sequences when your domain is hosted by the registrar Namecheap.
Make sure that you have already purchased the domain through Namecheap and that you have DNS control over your domain. In this tutorial, we will follow along with the domain tryhunter.co.
💡To set up a custom tracking domain in Hunter you need to be on a Growth plan or above and have no other tracking domain set up for your team.
Set up the Custom Domain
To set up your own custom domain in Hunter, you only need to add one DNS record, a CNAME. This can be done in 2 steps.
Let's go through each step in detail.
Add your subdomain in Hunter
Head to your sequence settings page, in the Custom Domain section.
In the text area, you will enter a subdomain of your Namecheap domain.
A subdomain is an extension in front of your domain. You can choose to add any word in front of your domain, such as track, tracking, etc. In this case, we've chosen to go with the subdomain track.tryhunter.co.
Click on "Set this custom domain".
Hunter will generate the CNAME record you need to add, this can take a couple minutes. Feel free to leave the page if needed.
Set up CNAME record
Log in to your Namecheap account, head to your Domain List section, and click "Manage" next to your domain. Then click "Advanced DNS", and in the "Host Records" section, click "Add new record":
Copy and paste the name and value Hunter shows you:
Type: select "CNAME Record"
Host: copy and paste the NAME from Hunter's Sequences Settings (e.g. track)
Value: copy and paste the VALUE from Hunter (e.g. hunterproxy.com.)
TTL: set it to 1 minute while setting up, then increase it afterwards
Save the changes, and wait until Hunter picks up the change — this should take less than 5 minutes, or use the refresh link in Hunter to check early.
💡 Once the custom tracking domain has been set up, you can increase the TTL value of your CNAME record. A short TTL speeds up verification while setting up, but a higher TTL (e.g. 20 minutes) makes your domain faster afterwards, since clients cache the record for longer.
What Custom Tracking looks like in Email Sequence
Once you've activated custom tracking domain, any links inserted in your sequences will use your own domain rather than one of Hunter's domains to track their performance. This will include links used to track if a recipient opens your emails, the various links that you insert in your emails, and the unsubscribe link.
